Background
Harold Deforest Arnold was born on September 3, 1883 in Woodstock, Connecticut, United States, the son of Calvin and Audra Elizabeth (Allen) Arnold.
Arnold with Apparatus, AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Darrow Collection.
Arnold studied at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
In 1911 Arnold earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Arnold was awarded the John Scott Medal in 1928 for development of 3-electrode high vacuum thermionic tube.
MURRAY HILL, NJ - MARCH 13, 1942: Bell Telephone Laboratory, Murray Hill, New Jersey. Main group through acoustics laboratory windows I. Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc./Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
electronics inventor physicist scientist
Harold Deforest Arnold was born on September 3, 1883 in Woodstock, Connecticut, United States, the son of Calvin and Audra Elizabeth (Allen) Arnold.
Arnold studied at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he received a Ph.B. (1906) and a Master of Science (1907), and in 1911 he earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago, where he studied physics under Robert Andrews Millikan.
After receiving the doctorate from the University of Chicago (1911), Arnold began his career as a specialist in telephone communications. When the Bell System needed someone to develop repeaters for its projected transcontinental line, Millikan recommended Arnold, who thus became one of the scientists who later laid the foundation of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Arnold first developed a mercury-arc repeater, but the device saw only limited use before his attention turned to the triode, which had been invented six years earlier by Lee de Forest (no kin). Its operation was still not entirely understood; the inventor himself did not appreciate the need for the highest attainable vacuum. Arnold was among the first to recognize the importance of high vacuum, and quickly developed designs that utilized reliable triodes and thus made long-distance telephony possible for the first time.
After World War I, part of which he spent as a captain in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Arnold returned to research work for Bell and made a number of important contributions to the development of new magnetic alloys used in sound reproduction and to electroacoustics generally.
He was named the first director of research when the Bell Telephone Laboratories were formed in 1925, a post he occupied until his death. He helped to lead that organization to its preeminent position among the industrial laboratories of the world.
Arnold`s contributions to science have been in the field of telephone transmission, thermionics, acoustics and magnetics. In the field of thermionics he was one of the earliest scientific workers and soon came to an appriciation ogf the necessity for a high vaccuum in the three-element tube.
Other contributions to this art were the development and application of methods for obtaining a high vacuum for commercial purposes. He developed designes for vaccuum tubes and methods for their manufacture so that tubes could be made to meet the telephonic requirements of reliability and ease of maintenance. This work included the development, under his immediate direction and his suggestion, of an oxide-coated filamnt as a source of electrons within this tube. He had charge of the adaptation of the tubes to the telephonic problem of long distance wire telephony and also of radio telephony. In recognition of these achievements, Dr. Arnold was awarded the John Scott Medal in 1928.
Another Arnold`s career achievement was in becoming the first director of research when the Bell Telephone Laboratories were formed in 1925, a post he occupied until his death. Later he provided his help and support to lead that organization until it reached its place among the industrial laboratories of the world.
The Church must be self-critical before it presumes to be critical of others.
Anyone may appear in hardship and poverty. Never give up in pursuit of happiness and one day you will find yourself in the right place, where God gives the sense of joy and assurances you are looking for.
Married Leila Stone Beeman, September 3, 1908. Children: Audra Elizabeth, Dorothy Edith.
Arnold earned the doctorate from the University of Chicago (1911), where he studied physics under Robert Andrews Millikan.